There is no growth without changes, there are no changes without choices…

Respect

I love my daily walks. When I walk my eyes automatically are searching for things of beauty, things that make my soul smile. Sometimes it is a flower reaching for the first glimpse of sun or a butterfly flying without clear logic. It can be face of a person passing by on a bike or a formation of clouds on the endless sky. But even more than searching for things of beauty I like to think.

Often when I walk I play in my head a mental game. I call it the “What if” game. In my thoughts I start with “what if” and then I am adding a condition. Than I am trying to imagine how it would be if the condition was true. Continue reading →

I don’t watch news anymore, seldom read any news and when I am confronted with what man call news, I am down…

I was thinking why? What makes me feel down? My conclusion is that the picture painted by news is not the picture I experience around me. It creates a dissonance with reality. This dissonance makes me question if what I experience is true and this leads to discomfort and feeling of being down. Continue reading →

Paris, the city of life, music, culture, food, love. City as multicultural as you can only imagine. Last year we have been there for Christmas with my family. Fabulous time!

Today Paris is all over the news. It is not news of life, music, culture, food, love. The news is about death and terror.

I feel sad and my thoughts are with all the innocent people who are not with us anymore and with the families and close relations, who will have to go further through life without them. All innocent people, no matter of color, religion, culture…

In my life philosophy I am always trying to look for good, even in events that are evil, negative. I must say that it is not easy today. What can be good in fact that a few lost souls indoctrinated by another few, whose values and goals are unclear, travel to one of the most beautiful cities in the World to kill many innocent people? This evaluation will have to wait till my sadness will weaken.

What it shows clearly is the well-known fight of opposites, the drama of life which takes place between the opposites. Les Brown said this well. “Life is a constant fight for territory. Once you stop fighting for what you want, what you don’t want will automatically take over”.

We can’t take health for granted as sickness is just around the corner, we can’t take good for granted as evil is just around the corner we can’t take life for granted as death is just around the corner…

Two days ago I wrote in the contexts of solving family conflicts that we should act according to 3 virtues: integrity, respect and love. Integrity requires from us to keep our values, respect requires from us to accept that other can have different values and love should help us to build the bridge which will allow us to have relation despite of differences. Wouldn’t it be great if we will learn to solve the conflicts based on these virtues?

But what to do if there is disrespect in place of respect and there is hate in place of love?

We have both right and responsibility to protect ourselves and our values, but we need to be careful.

In Poland we have a proverb: “he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword”. Therefore, we should beware of what we become while pursuing what we want to achieve!

Today my thoughts are with people of Paris. However, I am sure that this tragic event will not break down the city. In the end Paris will become even more the city of life, music, culture, food, love. City where people like my family will have fabulous time.

Life could be much more pleasant when more people would be just simple polite! Don’t you agree?

As Napoleon Hill wrote: “Politeness to others is usually born out of respect for the individual, which you learn as a child.”

We can say that politeness and respect are close friends. We learn to respect by being respected and we learn to be polite by being under the influence of polite people. After a while politeness and consideration for others can become a habit and we will be recognized as generally polite people.

I believe that most of the people do have the template of politeness and consideration stored in their subconscious mind. I also believe that most of the people deserve respect.

So how come that in our daily busy life we do not see as much of respect and politeness as one could expect? Isn’t it due to the fact that in the everyday rush we are preoccupied with our own lives and challenges? That we do not allow ourselves to be present and see what is happening around us for what it is?

In the end of the day the people in traffic, in the supermarket or in the office are similar to us. They also have their dreams and goals, their obstacles and challenges, their successes and failures.

Yes, we do have busy lives. Yes, we do have to be on time and we have to arrange hundreds of small things.

But wouldn’t it be easier and more pleasant when someone would just simple be nice to us, give us a smile, let us go first, open a door for us?

I believe it would.

So now the good question is, if we would like to meet people like that on our path, why do we not start from ourselves? Why do we not start by being more polite and more considered? It does not cost a lot and it can make someone’s day!

And you know… what goes around comes around. When you will start to act like that very soon people will start to act the same way towards you.